I’ve just returned from a few days in Washington, where the conversation continues to center on whether Republicans can regroup and rebound from their disappointing defeat in the November election.

Thoughts on what the GOP must do range from improving their Spanish to standing up in gay weddings.

But I think 2014 will be a huge Republican year.

The reason: Obamacare will be in place by the time Americans next go to the polls, and they’ll have tasted the true costs of a law they didn’t want in the first place.

I’m more convinced of that after returning home to find an exhaustive memo from Bob Daddow, Oakland County’s budget chief. Ol’ Doomsday was asked by his boss, Brooks Patterson, to figure out how forces beyond local control could rattle Oakland’s fiscal roof. His response: "Let me count the ways …"

As is his nature, Daddow is gloomy about lots of things, from how the new taxes in the fiscal cliff deal will impact small-business hiring to whether credit rating services will downgrade the national debt.

But mostly he’s fretting about how the Affordable Care Act will raise costs for Oakland’s taxpayers and the businesses that operate in the county.

"The potential cost impact on the county remains one of the more significant unquantifiable budget exposures," he writes.

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